a fox in the coop
by shineyma
Summary: A nightmare prompts Jemma to seek out the one person she shouldn't the morning after she returns from HYDRA.


A/N: A quick note or two: I actually started this drabble ages ago (about five minutes after 2x05 _A Hen in the Wolf House_ aired, in fact) in response to the show's annoying and troubling tendency to dangle Jemma from great heights (and this before they did it again in December!). Then I kind of stalled on it, so I put it aside and moved on to other projects and, as sometimes happens, I eventually totally forgot about it.

Until last night, when, in the course of discussing my "I wish I could hate you" drabble, I was reminded of this one's existence. That said, there are some minor similarities between this drabble and that one, so, for any of you who follow my tumblr, I wanted to make it clear that they're entirely unrelated.

This contains some canon from the beginning of 2x06, as it slotted in so perfectly, but other than that you can pretend that I posted this a few days after 2x05 as an episode tag. Okay? Okay. On with the fic!

* * *

Jemma surprises herself.

When she goes to bed—after reunions, both awkward and teary, and meetings, mostly just awkward—she expects to have nightmares. That's not a surprise. What surprises her is the _content_ of her nightmares.

She's expecting to dream about the past few months, walking into the lion's den every day with nothing but her subpar skills in deception to protect her. She's expecting to dream about Kenneth, who was hardly what one could call a good man but was nonetheless a friend, and who suffered for _her_ actions instead of his own. She's expecting to dream about being chased through the halls by well-armed HYDRA agents just waiting to kill her for her betrayal.

She _doesn't_ expect to dream about Grant Ward.

In her dream, she's standing at the edge of the cargo ramp, staring down at a thirty-thousand foot drop. The roaring of the wind drowns out the humming in her ears, but it does nothing for the buzzing in her skin. She knows she's only moments away from dying—from _detonating_, letting out a pulse that will knock out the Bus' systems and drop it right out of the sky.

She knows what she has to do.

She's running out of time, but she has to take a moment—just a moment—to gather her courage. And in that moment…

"You don't have to do it, you know."

She turns. Ward is standing there, leaning back against the SUV, arms crossed and face blank. He looks as he did when last she spoke to him—with stubble and a scar and eyes (which once regarded her with subtle warmth) gone cold—and it sends a chill up her spine. Over the roaring of the wind, she thinks she can hear herself screaming his name, pleading with him.

"Yes, I do," she says. Somehow, her voice is clear and perfectly audible, despite the wind. "The team will die if I don't."

He scoffs. "They can swim, can't they?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Fitz, lying in a decompression chamber surrounded by unfamiliar doctors. He's only there for a moment, and then the entire group wavers and dissipates like smoke in the wind.

"Not if they're not conscious," she says quietly.

"True," Ward says. The corner of his mouth ticks up briefly in a smirk. "But that wouldn't really be _your_ problem, now would it?"

"Yes, it would," she snaps. "Anything that involves my team _dying_ is absolutely my problem."

Ward sighs and pushes away from the SUV, walking over to join her at the bottom of the ramp.

"You'll be dead either way," he reminds her. "Why not bring them with you?"

She stares at him, speechless, for a long moment. He ignores her, leaning over the edge of the ramp to take in the drop and making a little face.

"Seriously, Simmons," he says, straightening. "It's a long way down."

"Y-You're _unbelievable_," she finally manages to sputter. "Just because _I_ have to die is no reason to kill the rest of the team!"

"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, Simmons," Ward says, and drapes an arm around her shoulders. "They're dead either way, too."

She should shove him away, but can't quite muster up the energy for it. The buzzing underneath her skin is increasing, sapping away her strength. And, though she'd never admit it, the warm weight of his arm is…not a horrible sensation.

It's been so long since she had any sort of prolonged physical contact with another person. Hasn't it? No, she hugged Skye, didn't she? Earlier?

Or maybe it was later.

Either way, it feels…nice. Comforting. Like something she's been missing. And she'll be dead soon, she knows. What's the harm of taking comfort right before she dies, even if the comfort _does_ come from a traitor?

Then his words process, and she looks up at him. "What do you mean, they'll be dead either way?"

"You heard what Hunter said," Ward says. "Skye's been going down to the Vault to visit me. Regularly. She's getting intel from me—not only getting it, but _trusting_ it. Coulson's the one ordering her down there, so he must trust it, too. Trust _me_."

"Trusting you will get them killed," she surmises, looking away from him and back to the open air in front of them.

"You trusted me, didn't you?" he muses. "Right up to the moment I pushed that button, a little part of you trusted me, no matter what you said to Fitz."

There's no point in denying it. All of the facts—Koenig's death, Skye's kidnapping, the fall of the Fridge—said that Ward was a traitor. She stood by it, defended it as the truth to the rest of the team, and tried her hardest to convince Fitz of it, as well. But, deep down inside, part of her kept whispering that it was all a trick. That he was a triple agent, spying on Garrett for their sake.

That little corner of her heart that felt something more than affection for the man who had saved them all so many times couldn't accept the truth. Not until he cornered them in that shack and looked at her with those cold, dead eyes.

"Coulson trusts me," Ward reiterates quietly. "And he's SHIELD's Director, now. He'll get _everyone_ killed."

"No, he won't," she says. She steels herself and ducks away from Ward's arm, turning to face him. "I won't let him."

He looks away and shakes his head, laughing under his breath.

"What?" she demands. "_What_ is so funny?"

"How are you gonna stop him?" he asks. "You'll be dead."

He reaches out, presses his hand to her heart, and gives her a hard shove. She goes flying backwards, off the edge of the cargo ramp and into the open air.

Then she's falling…

…falling…

falling…

She wakes with a scream stuck in her throat. Her heart is racing, and she presses one hand to it as she sits up.

It was only a nightmare.

It's been months since she dreamt of falling. Even after she and Fitz were…forcibly ejected from the Bus, she always dreamt of drowning, not falling. Fleeing the HYDRA building via the roof must have brought it back.

Ward's inclusion is a surprise as well, although it really shouldn't be. He's never far from her mind, of late. And not just because she's been undercover and spying on HYDRA the way he spied on SHIELD, although that's certainly part of it. As is the lingering anger and fear from the way he tried to kill her and Fitz.

But the bulk of her preoccupation was her fear. While she was at HYDRA, she spent the whole time with her heart in her throat, expecting that she might be discovered as a traitor at any moment. And the one question—which she tried so hard not to think but could never help—was who would rescue her if she were. Once, she would have barely feared discovery at all, trusting that Ward would be able to get her out before anything could happen. Without Ward, she wondered, who (if anyone) would save her in the event of exposure?

She knows the answer now, of course. Bobbi is amazing and Jemma is glad that she'll be sticking around. And, if not Bobbi, Trip still would have been there. It was foolish of her to doubt that.

Still, the months since she learned the truth about him haven't been enough to break her of her reflexive trust in Ward. When she's in danger, it's him she expects to save her, at least for the first split second before she remembers the truth.

After a moment, she becomes aware that her hand is rubbing her chest where Ward shoved her, and she snatches it away.

He's a traitor. She knows that. She knew it from the moment she laid eyes on Eric Koenig's corpse. Still, for whatever reason, she can't seem to convince her subconscious of it. (Although the dream is an encouraging sign.)

She looks at the clock on her bedside table. It's nearly six am. She knows what that means.

Ward is up at exactly five-thirty every morning, despite the lack of visible indicators of the time, in order to work out. She knows because she watched him, every single morning before she left. She was hoping that seeing him in that cell—locked up like the traitor he is—would help her with putting her instinctive trust of him aside.

It didn't work, obviously.

She always watched him on the cameras, though. The only time she actually entered the Vault was to save him when he attempted suicide, and he was a patient to her then, not a traitor.

Perhaps…if she sees him in person…if she looks into his eyes and sees that coldness again…

Maybe that will do the trick.

It's probably foolish. But she slides out of bed anyway. She doesn't bother to get dressed; although she'd prefer to wear a little more to confront Ward than the vest top and shorts she slept in, changing is a little difficult at the moment—between the way the force with which she hit the Quinjet after jumping from the roof bruised her ribs and the strain that clinging to Bobbi's hands in order to keep from flying off it put on her shoulders, she's in a not-insignificant amount of pain.

Getting dressed for bed was not a fun experience, and now that she's had hours to stiffen up, she suspects removing her vest top—to say nothing of attempting to put on a bra—would be a lesson in agony. Her pajamas are decent enough, and she doesn't plan to stay long.

Most importantly, she doesn't dare waste the time. Any moment common sense will reassert itself, and she'll lose her nerve.

She needs this. She needs to see him as the traitor he is. She can't afford to keep this instinctive trust of him. Even though it only ever lasts for a second, it's a second that might get her killed some day, should he ever (God forbid) escape.

The base is eerily still as she walks through the corridors towards the Vault. She knows some of the others will be awake—Coulson and May, at the very least—but she sees no sign of them. She's glad. If anyone knew what she's planning, they would undoubtedly stop her.

She needs this.

She makes it to the Vault without encountering anyone. She hesitates at the door, then steels herself and enters. He can't hurt her through the barrier. She just needs to remember that. She's safe and he's a prisoner.

She survived months undercover in HYDRA. She can survive a simple encounter with a man in a cell.

The cell's barrier is opaque when she enters the Vault, for which she can only be grateful. It gives her a few extra seconds to gather her composure as she descends the stairs. Once she reaches the cell itself, she takes a few seconds to breathe deeply, reminds herself again that she has nothing to fear from him here, and presses the button to make the barrier transparent.

When she does, it takes all of her self-control not to back away. Ward obviously heard her coming, as he's standing right on the other side of the line—well within touching distance, were it not for the barrier.

And the barrier, being currently invisible, is not terribly reassuring.

"Simmons," Ward says, and she fists her hands. His eyes don't look cold—they look soft, as soft as his voice. "I wasn't expecting you."

"No?" she asks.

"I mean, I _was_, just not this early," he corrects, with a little half-smile. There's nothing mocking or cruel about it, and for a wild moment, Jemma wants nothing more than to reach through the barrier and _shake_ him. She _needs_ him to be cruel. She needs him to be the man who dropped her into the ocean, not the man who caught her above it.

This won't work if he's kind.

She wonders if he somehow knows why she's here, if he can read her intentions in the set of her jaw or the way she's blinking or something similarly absurd, and if he'd be awful enough to deliberately sabotage her attempts to change the way she thinks of him by being kind instead of cruel.

Then she considers that her time in HYDRA might have made her paranoid.

"I wondered if you would visit," he adds. "After Fitz did."

…What?

"Fitz visited you?" she asks, startled.

He raises his eyebrows. "You didn't know?"

"No," she says, trying to shake off her surprise—and mostly failing. She didn't even realize that Fitz knew about Ward's presence in the base. "No, I've been…away."

"Away where?" he asks, sounding honestly curious.

It's none of his business, and she's about to tell him so when she abruptly changes her mind. She wants to see his reaction to this news.

"In HYDRA," she says plainly.

"HYDRA?" he asks, frowning severely. "Were you captured? Are you okay?"

He looks—and sounds—genuinely concerned, and she digs her nails into her palms.

"Actually, I was undercover," she says evenly. "And I'm fine."

Still frowning, he gives her a slow once over which, despite being not at all sexual, makes her flush.

"You're not fine. You're in pain," he says unhappily. "Bruised ribs?"

"That's none of your concern," she snaps, suddenly furious. This isn't going at all the way she planned it, and it's horrible.

She doesn't know what he's trying for, playing the concerned friend instead of the traitor she knows him to be, but she wishes he would stop. She needs him to be awful. This won't work if he's not awful.

"The hell it's not," he snaps back. "What the fuck was Coulson thinking, sending _you_ undercover? You could've been killed!"

Her fury drains away in the face of his, and she's left blinking at him, feeling absurdly hollow. He sounds like he cares, and knowing that it's just as fake as the man she called her friend doesn't make it any less striking.

This was a mistake.

"He didn't have much choice," she says. She tries to make it sharp and fails. "We're rather short on intel, at the moment."

"Yeah, but _you_?" he asks. In the face of her changed tone, his own voice softens from anger to something approaching fondness, and she forces herself to ignore the lump it puts in her throat. "Simmons, you're a _terrible_ liar."

She's heard it so many times from so many people, the response is rote by now. "I'm getting better."

Ward, unlike basically everyone else she's told, actually seems to hear her.

"Maybe you are," he says. "I don't know. But you could be the world's best liar and it would _still_ be a fucking stupid idea to send you undercover. You don't have the right training for it."

The words—or, more precisely, the concern behind them, the hint of the warmth she once accepted as fact but now knows was nothing but a lie—bring some of her anger back, and she scoffs.

"Well, as someone who actually _does_ have training, we thought of sending _you_," she says. "Except then we remembered that it wouldn't be a cover at all, since you're _actually the enemy._ Which, happily for me, means that your opinion counts for exactly _nothing_."

He has the nerve to look hurt by it and, to her dismay, something in her chest tightens at the sight. She turns away, disgusted with herself.

"I'm not your enemy, Simmons," he says quietly.

"You tried to kill me," she reminds him, without heat. She's too tired to manage the spite that should accompany the words. "You're going to kill us all."

"What?" he asks, and the confusion in his voice has her turning to face him again.

Bizarrely, she has to work to hold back a smile. Her dream—nightmare—is still so fresh in her mind, she almost forgot that it didn't actually happen. Of course he has no idea what she's talking about, or why she would think—beyond general suspicion, that is—that he's going to kill the whole team.

"Nothing," she says, and shakes her head. "Of course you're my enemy. How could you not be?"

Ward shifts closer to the barrier, and this time she doesn't bother resisting the urge to back away. His eyes are soft and sincere, and she _knows_ it's an act, but her stomach twists anyway.

Why is she still here?

"I didn't want to hurt you, Simmons," he says earnestly. "I had my orders, but—"

"Don't," she interrupts, holding up a hand to stop him. "Just—don't. I'm not here to hear your excuses."

His posture shifts minutely, earnest expression falling away to be replaced with something slightly more shrewd, and Jemma swallows. It's evidence of what she already knew—that the concern was an act—yet, somehow, it's still painful.

Her heart is just as much of a traitor as he is.

"Why _are_ you here?" he asks.

It's an excellent question. What was she _thinking_? That seeing him—speaking to him—would be enough to change what full knowledge and understanding of his numerous crimes couldn't? That she could rewrite her instincts in a single, quick visit? That her heart would finally catch up with her head?

It's absurd.

"You know," she says, with a humorless laugh, "I truly have no idea."

She shakes her head and turns away, hitting the button to turn the barrier opaque before he can offer any protest—if indeed he would have. It's impossible to guess and entirely irrelevant besides, so she heads up the stairs without further delay. She's lingered too long already.

Unless the patterns of the base have changed during her time at HYDRA, the Playground will be stirring soon. She needs to hurry back to her room; she doesn't want to get caught by anyone in the corridors and be forced to explain herself—mostly because she's not sure she _could_.

This wasn't the healing encounter she thought it would be, and she has the unpleasant suspicion that her instinctive trust of Ward will continue unchecked.

She just hopes it doesn't get her—or anyone else—killed.


End file.
